Alexander Kluge formulated this statement in the early 1970s, when he took issue with the protests raised by those in the women's movement against his film GELEGENHEITSARBEIT EINER SKLAVIN/PART-TIME WORK OF A DOMESTIC SLAVE (1973). In order to determine the meaning of ‘female productive force', the film had attempted to depict a ‘femininity’ [Weiblichkeit] that was oppressed, but which, unaccommodated to its oppression, resisted it. The doubt that arose in the course of those discussions as to whether that attempt had been successful - indeed, whether it could have succeeded - to some extent still remains today. At the same time we must admit that the original debate was not free of moralistic overtones. Women who had been working hard towards a repeal of Paragraph 218/ and who were daily confronted with the problems of birth control and illegal abortions, were understandably unsympathetic to the filmic documentation of an abortion that did not support their struggle. Marlies Kallweit wrote:

In fact, as Ruby Rich later concluded, the production of PART-TIME WORK OF A DOMESTIC SLAVE ignored the public sphere of the women's movement.